Seeing reality as it is is still a possibility. In fact, that is what we do. More or less

Hoffman just published another paper discussing his computer simulations indicating it is better to not experience reality as it is.

The ideas as stated are of course not new. They are present already in Plato's cave myth. But what should be pointed out I think, is that the ideas are actually not very interesting. Or perhaps even scientifically wrong.

First. We describe reality with models that approximate it. Hence, there is nothing new to anyone that we do not experience reality exactly as is. But what is more important is that there is, taking the scientific process to its limit over time, really nothing else to say about reality. Per definition. If there had been, it would be covered by some scientific theory. This is kind of the argument also against a supernatural being which I yet have not met any theist having a reasonable argument against: if an entity can interact with reality, that mechanism of interaction can be probed, and thus modeled. And then it is not supernatural any more. If there is no such interaction mechanism, they the entity has no implication on our reality.
Thus, in a proof by contradiction, there cannot be any supernatural entity.

On another note, of course an organism can be greatly successful and still not perceive reality fully. That's trivial. Take treas or any other plant. Surely their perceptive abilities are very limited and do not cover the whole of reality. They are still very successful as a spices. There is no problem here. However, a tree does also create models of the world. It is about light and temperature and nutrition. And the trees act according to those models. Surely, those models are quite good, they have made trees very successful. They approximate reality and the approximation is in direct relation to what that species needs. Trees cannot move, and hence they do not need models for kinematics.

This actually leads to an interesting thought - is evolution creating model-generating organisms? It looks like it. The genes are really an information processing system and as such, they are operating on some model assumption.

Seriously California, you are not making you best effort!

I recently had the opportunity to visit Silicon Valley. The stay was a pleasure, interesting meetings and great weather. But I must say I got quite upset. It was my first visit there, and it was very clear - California: you are not making your best effort here. I am of course talking about climate. Some examples:

• San Jose is, I don't know how, large. 4-5 lane roads, enormous parking lots and virtually no public transportation. Only 1-store buildings. This is not a building culture that is sustainable.
• On every single trash can I could find, it was printed "land fill". What the heck California? This is something we stopped doing in Sweden 40-50 years ago.
• In my hotel the cleaning lady changed my toilet roll even though it was at least 1/3 of the paper left. Enough to last several days for me! Just because it looks good. I am sure they throw that roll.

These are just some observations of the fact that this "liberal" state does not care. Here, in the richest area in the wold - without competition - nobody really cares about the environment. They care about exits, autonomous cars and apps.
I think California should feel ashamed. You have been the most lucky, yes lucky, in the world and you are not prepared to give anything back. That's BS. Shame on you!

Regeringens symbolism

Följande foto är från regeringens budgetpresentation ht 2019:

Här kan man se att både Stefan och Isabella väljer att bära sina partisymboler på slaget. Är inte detta underligt för en regering? Borde det inte vara svenska flaggan om någon de ska bära? Vilken är deras främsta prioritet egentligen? Sverige eller partiet?

What's it like to be a human

There are of course many ideas about this. So here is one at least I have not heard of before.

The unique thing with being human is that we can form models. The rest of us is really just ordinary animals. But the capability to form and reason in models makes us unique and exceptional.

Why? Well, the idea is that models are extremely powerful tools for comprehending the world and creating things. All achievements we have accomplished during the last 2000 years have been through models actually.

Further, to perform any task that is a bit more complex, it require that there is a model in its basis.

Some things we can do that do not require a model basis is
- creating art
- playing chess
These would seem to be unique human capabilities. But I would argue they are a side effect of our large brain. In principle a monkey could do it. However, a monkey could never build a rocket. Why? Because that require massive use of models to get everything right. And they can't do that.

The fear of AI is completely misleading

Many people are raising a fear for AI and that a super intelligence might not be aligned with the interests of humans. There are many reasons to be skeptical against such a view. Some have been covered in this blog before. Here is another one.

Say that is turns out artificial super intelligence is the outcome of the processes we see now. Say that such ASI outperform humans in most tasks. Why is it then a bad thing that they supersede us? If they are the next step in evolution, is it not a good thing that it materializes?

Very many of the arguments against ASI are really grounded in fear. But fear is not a good basis for making decisions.

About AGI

Alison Gopnik pointed out something very important about AGI and general capabilities. As you increase certain capabilities, e.i. you strengthen the priors, you at the same time reduce a capability of generalizing.

This could be used to derive some theorem about limits of capability. Widening it somewhere will be necessity narrow it down somewhere else.

So creating a general intelligence like a human will forcibly reduce some other capabilities, e.g. in playing chess.

This is an indication of that there is a limit in how intelligent an entity can be and also that AGI might not supersede us after all.

Integrated functional co-evolution

This might be a completely well understood and known thing, but I just realized that there is co-evolution within a single organism. Easiest is probably to illustrate with an example. Why do humans have arms and hands? They are really not very impressive compared to e.g. a cat's legs - sharp claws and strong so that they can jump 4-5 times their own height.
But the hands and arms have a completely unique feature - they are very generic. We can do many things with them. This would not be a very useful feature for a cat since they are fairly dump, and would thus not know how to use these generic tools. So, to be useful, they also have to go with a very large brain. Just as it happens, humans do have large brains. This is not a coincidence. Our brains have evolved together with our generic arms and hands. As we became smarter, new advanced things could be made with our hands, and then it would be beneficial to have more generic and even better hands and arms. E.g. with finer resolution.

This kind of integrated functional co-evolution is a different kind of evolution compared to how spices evolve in relation to it's surrounding. It is also different compared to ordinary co-evolution where different organisms co-evolve so e.g. be more and more specialized.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone can tell if this is well know process, or something novel. It would also be nice to test this in some kind to computer simulation.